Cousin Linda is 62 today! Marilyn and I hope to get together with her and at least have coffee to celebrate... Time flies! Seriously, it's easy to remember when we were all teens. Hahaha.

I was SO TIRED last night that I couldn't even force myself to blog. I'm always more tired in September and October EVERY YEAR. And this year is no exception. (sigh)

I got a TON done both yesterday and today. Personal errands and WORK-RELATED projects, both.

Yesterday (Tuesday, September 19) I contacted Comcast and got all the information for Sue's phone account. Then I helped her to start erasing all the old messages that were blocking her phone. She had items going back to February of 2016!!! This was when she went into the hospital and then that nursing facility for a time. She hasn't had her messages working since that time! I'm really pleased with how it went and how diligent Sue was both yesterday and today going through everything and get it cleared out. Now people can leave her messages again!

This matters, as she has doctors and so on trying to reach her about appointments and prescriptions, so it's difficult when they can't leave a message (in case she's not there or she's sleeping when they call).

I want to fix messages on her cell phone, too -- but I need Candy's help to do that. So far she hasn't responded to my text messages about it. She made it clear she doesn't want to do anything, so I'm trying to take the burden off her. But I guess she doesn't think it matters if Sue can get messages on her cell or not.

Marilyn and I think it matters because it will connect her with her friends again! They don't really call her anymore and it's partly due to being unable to leave messages. I get it, because it's been equally annoying for Marilyn and me when we're calling her...

Lots of website work going on right now. And today I was trying to CHANGE THE SUBSCRIPTION area on the website, now that we're not using Cooler anymore and have changed to MailChimp. But I don't have ACCESS to the area I need to reach.

This has been my issue with the 'new' website ever since we switched over back in 2014. I've never had total access to the site and can't touch certain portions. I've been pushing and pushing to get it ever since. And it came to a head today.

I guess we'll see tomorrow whether I finally get it or not!

We're dealing with a DRASTIC change in the weather here! We've had horrible rains and thunder and lightning storms. We were in bed and heard a TERRIBLE crash last night. I was convinced someone was outside the garage messing with things (as we've had that happening lately). But it turned out to be a huge branch that came crashing down and hit the house. We both went out to see it and got wet from the rain...

It's not only sopping wet and pouring, but it's COLD. I actually considered turning on the heat (!!!) today! In all the time we've lived in this house I have NEVER turned on the heat in September! In fact, I find it annoying if I have to turn it on before November!

Marilyn has been dealing with the cold in her office, too, which is total glass on two walls. They reset her thermostat and messed it up (as they often do). But happily Steven was able to reset it enough that she wasn't too cold yesterday or today...

Marilyn didn't get home until 9:00 p.m. last night. So getting home after 7:00 tonight seemed early. She picked me up without coming in and we ran straight to pick up my meds at Riteaid (they had called me yesterday).

Speaking of, for whatever reason my Metformin needed a new prescription! What the hell? It's paired with my Glipizide (both diabetes meds), so I was already annoyed they weren't getting filled together. But there's NO CHANGE there this time, so why did it need a refill when the other didn't? And WHY didn't the clinic call it in when I saw Leslie back in August??? It shouldn't fall on either Riteaid or me to make sure it's there, but that's how it goes...

Marilyn actually authorized me to set up training with Inflow (our telephone support company) for Donn and me if I want to do that. I discussed it with Heidi from Inflow and she sent me to a TWO HOUR online instructional video that I'm very slowly and carefully working my way through. She's going to give me two weeks to absorb the info and then discuss what things I might want to work on. We haven't had in-house training from Inflow since 2010 -- and that was before Donn came to work there. So it could be a good idea.

On the other hand, as I go through all this stuff, I'm rather surprised by how much of it I already know. I need to write it up and start training Donn and Wanda on the material.

I used to train Christine on some of this, but we let it go over time. And I've barely touched on it with Donn to date. I think it could be helpful for someone else to understand the back end of the phone system. Currently I handle it all, which is no problem. I have the aptitude and am almost entirely self-taught. (The original training from Inflow wasn't helpful -- Hailey and I basically jumped in and figured it out ourselves. She learned the front end and I learned the back end. But Hailey hasn't been on staff for several years now...)

I totally digressed from Marilyn and me out shopping after work! Once we got my meds we dashed over to Freddies and picked up quite a few things. I have a long list, and we got most of it. We needed bottled water and cat food and kitty litter and garbage bags and light bulbs and chili and canned white beans and refried beans (we eat a lot of beans!) and bread and so on... We shopped quickly and got home around 8:00. Still earlier than Marilyn got home last night!

She never had a break either yesterday or today. And she said both Jessica and Carol were still working when she left tonight...

We both came home and fixed sandwiches for dinner and I made a pot of coffee (we drink Yuban). Then she was ill. She said she started to get a headache driving home and her IBS-d made her very sick after shopping. She's downstairs now sleeping on the sofa. She was feeling pretty lousy.

I felt crummy all afternoon, too. My seasonal allergies are bugging me. And my hips are KILLING ME. You wouldn't think the pain could get me down like this, but it does. I'd like to be more active, but it's hard when the pain is this bad.

We had watched The Beatles in "Help!" (the restored DVD) last night, but Marilyn had fallen asleep. So we put it back on tonight to watch the end over. And she had to watch it twice to see it, as she fell asleep again.

We really love the Beatles! And we love that movie. It takes us back, that's for sure.

We were HUGE fans of the cartoon series, which isn't really available to purchase. I'm going to watch some of it on YouTube, though. We never used to miss it.

Next up we'll watch the DVD of "A Hard Day's Night." We have that waiting to view...

I finished "Forever Amber," which made me sad. Not the ending, but because I was enjoying reading it so very much! What a wonderfully written and engaging book! I love historical novels so much.

Now I'm reading the book Dick Van Dyke wrote about aging. I want to start reading it to sister Sue, too.

I heard from my jury friend Lucy today!!! (Via Facebook.) That made me happy! I didn't know her last name until today, so I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to connect with her. I had given her and another woman my business card, so she had everything she needed to contact me. Anyway, I'm very glad she did. I really think we have a lot in common. I saw that she's done NaNoWriMo, which is something right there! I'd love to give that a shot again one of these years. But it's hard going, no doubt!

I actually did some fiction writing last night!!! I doubt I'll share (it's slash fanfic), but at least I gave it a shot. That's the first time in ages. It reminded me how much I love writing.

I did my pills when we got home tonight. I need to start doing a week at a time, but as long as I have them ready in advance of taking them, I'm happy.

Well, I'm dead beat, so off to bed. I'm just yawning and yawning! I'll need to phone Hector about the gutters. I sure don't want issues with them right now.

Sweet dreams, friends.

No contact from Lilia regarding the Rose Garden Store website. Hmm. SHE was the one who originally contacted ME about this, after all -- causing me to spend hours on the task! Do I have a right to be annoyed that she's now ignoring me about it? (sigh) Maybe it wasn't as important to her as I was made to believe...

The Roosevelt High School Alumni Association website? As of this afternoon (!!!) it's back up again! And Doteasy did ALL THE WORK of reloading it for me! I had figured I would have to FTP all the pages again. I'm delighted about this, as I'm meeting tomorrow late afternoon with Megan (the new webmaster) to discuss the site...

First thing tomorrow? Starbucks with Rich, who is coming in!!! (woo hoo) That makes me happy!

I also have BOTH Donn and Kris coming to the office to work. My, my. Marilyn asked me to get Kris in, so he could set up more QuickBooks on various computers. Works for me! And he was glad to come...

Marilyn goes BACK to the doctor about her knee in the morning, too. I hope it's good news.

Sue's doctor appointment with Jennifer (the new doctor) today? Marilyn and Sue BOTH loved her! And she's far from a 'new' doctor, having been in practice for 39 years. She did the first round of tests to determine if Sue actually has dementia, by the way. In one test she did NOT score in the dementia range, but there are more tests yet to come. She wants to wean Sue off her antidepressant, which would probably be good (and said she didn't see a need for it).

Marilyn was pretty stressed trying to get to Sue's and then the appointment! She was in standstill traffic. She said today that Portland traffic is one of the reasons she has such high blood pressure...

Jennifer had a cancellation of her 2:30 appointment, which is why she went ahead and saw Sue (even though they were really late getting there). I had called in advance to let them know Sue and Marilyn would be late...

I did NOT go along. I decided that three people made one too many to face the new doctor, even though Marilyn said I would have loved meeting Jennifer. Interesting note: this happens to be Carol's doctor!!! Isn't it a small world?

As for me, aside from working on the RHSAA website/domain for hours today, I also did website work for the festival. Again, I can't get over how I sort of fell into website work all those years ago! And I'll never stop mentioning that LiveJournal was instrumental in my success as a webmaster. I love the work so much. The more hands-on I get to be with code, the more I enjoy it. (grin)

Swapping out one site version for another is no small feat, by the way. I was DELIGHTED to get it done so quickly, I must admit. And Doteasy remains a huge help after all these years. Marilyn and I lucked in to using them and have never been sorry! This is such a great company. Plus they respond so quickly whenever I contact them. This could have taken days to do (or weeks!), but look how fast it went!

Marilyn's manicure (and matching pedicure) is blue -- did I mention that before? So pretty! She looked so nice in her dress today, by the way...

I'm very happy with how my hair looks! And with my purple nails. I had dried my hair pretty straight, but after sweating even a small amount, it immediately went very, very curly. Hahaha. Even without touching it with brush or comb it looked great this morning!

Speaking of GREAT things (grin), I woke up today having a low blood sugar incident. Not terribly low, but still low. I tested, then ate a couple small pieces of my Ice Chip candies. It's Xylitol sweetened candy, and it immediately put everything RIGHT for me! No spike. But I also didn't have to wait for an hour or more feeling crappy (as you do when you have a low) until I leveled out again! This stuff is a miracle, I have to tell you... Plus I love the idea that it's GOOD for my teeth, too.

I did a really nasty, dirty job today! I brought in all the 'animal feeding bowls' I keep outside for the birds and critters. The area can get quite muddy in bad weather, plus a lot of various foods ends up in the bowls. So they really needed scrubbing out. I did have some plastic bowls, but I tossed those a while back. They get too nasty and don't hold up. I like metal bowls and heavy ceramic ones, which can hang in there year round. Now they're all clean, and I filled up several with water. The poor birds and critters are really thirsty in all this summer heat!

I did run a load of dishes, too -- including the popcorn popper! (smile)

Marilyn and I are disgusted with our CenturyLink email accounts now! She can't access her account at all. And mine is ridiculously slow. I guess we'll get Comcast emails -- we have a Comcast modem, but haven't been using it for wired internet, only WiFi. Once we do that, I think it will finally be time to entirely dump our CenturyLink account. We've had it FOREVER, from back when it was Qwest... I'm sorry it's so damn messed up, but that's how it goes.

Marilyn and I had discussed changing our next vacation (which is next week) until the week after. I said I was fine with that -- whatever worked for her, of course. But now it turns out we'll be keeping the original vacation after all. Again, whatever works! (smile)

Busy day tomorrow! I think I'll get some SLEEP.

I hope you all sleep well and have lovely dreams!

How have I spent my ENTIRE day (so far)??? Screwing with my computer, with my CenturyLink modem and with my Outlook settings. What do I think of MOST CenturyLink Level One support people? Stupid. Well, perhaps UNTRAINED and UNINFORMED would be more accurate and fair. But when you're me dealing with them and it's really frustrating and time-consuming, stupid seems apropos.

Here's how it starts:
I go to my computer first thing to check my email. Email isn't working. So I try and number of Outlook fixes for about half an hour. Then I suddenly realize I'm NOT ONLINE. This is a bigger problem than just Outlook being weird (as always). I phone CenturyLink and get a recording: They've been doing service in our area. Unplug my modem for five minutes and then plug it back in and everything will be fine. I try this four time within around a forty-minute time period. I'm getting pretty annoyed. So I call CenturyLink's support line AGAIN. No recording now, by the way!

The first Level One I reached tried a bit to help. Couldn't. Was sweet as can be (told me she was in Utah). But also told me I needed to buy a new modem to resolve my issue. BUY A NEW MODEM? "Your modem is pretty old," said she. And that was the extent of her knowledge. The second Level One I reached had a bit more smarts -- but was intimidated by my knowledge and snarky as hell. So much for sweet! She kept telling me to 'slow down' as we talked -- because she's following a sheet of instructions, obviously. Eventually between the two of us we managed to RESET the modem. Then the Level Two my Level One has on the phone resets our account password and my girl tells me what it is so I can set things up on this end. I'm finally on the internet (back online)!!! Woo hoo!

But Outlook won't work and I'm not getting email... (I let her go without helping with Outlook because she was quite clear that she had no experience with it. I bet.) So after dicking around with it, I finally get annoyed and call them back AGAIN. Why? Because I'm thinking maybe our email passwords are also corrupted and need resetting. This time I get Justin (who appears to be East Indian -- but the first two women were clearly Americans). At first I think he's not all that sharp. But suddenly he tells me the Qwest emails are being DISABLED!!! And that we should have (should have, mind you!) been notified in May that they were shutting them down. Um, I'm pretty incensed at this point.

First I'm told I need to buy a new modem. Not true. Now I'm told they've deactivated our email accounts without prior notice -- and believe me I went directly in and checked my emails to see it I'd gotten anything -- which was a big NO.

Then Justin goes into our account -- with much checking of who I am and do I have the account number (of course) and Social Security info (of course). Guess what? He finds that we have 'protected' emails. Good news! Except they mine work, of course. Hahaha. And then he tells me there are ALL NEW SETTINGS for the accounts! It's a new POP3 and new SMTP. Clearly if you have those wrong, you're not going to get or send email! Hahaha. So we walk through it. I can tell right away he's pleased that he doesn't have to tell me where to find any of these settings in Outlook, because as HE later said, I obviously know Outlook better than he does. (Probably true, as I work with it all the time at the office.) He gives me the changed POP3 and SMTP, plus the changed port info. And a few other settings. We're still having issues! I'm convinced we have corrupt passwords. But he makes a good point: I'd been to their online account and logged in using my username and password! So it's not that... But it keeps popping up over and over and over asking for the password. Then he asks about the username. This is usually not the full email -- but he tells me to try it. And it works! That's the good news, anyway...

So now my email is working just fine. I thank him many times and praise him and promise him a good review (which I'll absolutely do). Now I move to Marilyn's computer and her email. And start the process again... BAD NEWS. Marilyn's Outlook does NOT seem to be working. (sigh) So I guess I need to phone them all over again! Are you kidding me??? I'm so frustrated. What a wasted day!

And now, on a totally different note: When I mentioned recently about having Donn help me 'set up' a computer for sister Sue...

Guys, YES, I'm very, very experienced with basic computer setup. Hahaha. I've been doing IT Management since 2007. Plus I've been supporting people with their computers for a long time before that. Not only can I set up a home computer, but I can add a second monitor (set up dual monitors, in other words). And I can set up a home network (I've networked a lot of computers over the years). But unlike Donn, I do NOT open up computer towers if I can help it. I actually used to do that a bit way back when. But I don't have the expertise -- and have no plans to learn how. Why bother? I've got Donn for that. I have enough to learn on the software and Server side (my personal area of expertise). It's rarely necessary, anyway. But if it is necessary to open one up, I send computers to Donn -- who has been building them forever. (Know your limits, I say.)

I don't know if that sounds odd to people or not. But I manage IT -- which primarily means I'm the one who manages the people who work on our equipment. Frankly, for a manager I do a ton of hands-on work, which I don't mind at all, by the way. I do try to avoid lugging around heavy equipment anymore (I'm not supposed to because of my enlarged spleen, so this is not an age-related cop-out). There are loads of people who know more about this IT than I, of course. And remember: I have had NO FORMAL TRAINING for the work I do. It's all hands-on experience -- and a lot of reading of manuals and online information. But I do believe I know more than the average person does (and sometimes more than so-called experts I deal with, too). Otherwise I certainly couldn't do my very complex job.

So why would I have Donn help me? Because I'm not planning to do something standard. Plus he has the unit (I had him buy) that we'll use to hold the equipment. And he's the one who most recently had his hands on my sister's computer, not me. (In many ways Donn has more free time than I, so I often get him to do this work when I'm tied up with other things. He's not full time by any means, as you may have guessed by reading my blog.) And I don't mind having Donn by my side -- which I do at the office quite often. That doesn't mean he does all the work -- it means we have a partnership in the work we do!

I think somehow I gave the impression I couldn't put a computer together and hook it up to the internet, but that's just not the case. I'm pretty handy with computers and devices...

In other non-IT-related news, I just heard from Megan with the Roosevelt High School Alumni Association (RHSAA). She wants my help to revert to the website I created for them several years back, which I've told her I will be glad to do. She has experience with websites and HTML. But I don't think she hand codes or uses an FTP to upload pages. So she's unsure how to take what she already has (I gave them every single page a couple of years ago) and actually put it Live again.

It's very handy to be able to write code, read code and upload code without using anything fancy to do those things. I'm so grateful I learned all three!

That's it for now. I need to get some actual WORK done! (sigh) More later (I hope).

I just woke up from a NAP after dinner with LEG CRAMPS. Yes, again. Constantly, really.

So, I'm trying the spoonful of mustard thing. Specifically, I'm trying Jack Daniels jalapeno mustard -- what amazing flavor! I was going to say that the jury's out on whether or not it works, but I do believe it works. Not perfectly -- but nothing I've tried does that! Hahaha. And Marilyn finds the idea of getting yourself to take it with a spoon pretty disgusting. But I'd do just about anything to stop all the pain. And they might just have the very BEST mustard I've ever tasted.

Although, I have to admit I still like classic French's mustard with my Heinz Tomato Ketchup. And Heinz??? I really HATE those commercials where the Heinz boy breaks up with the French's mustard!!! Not in my house, thanks very much! Hahaha. We do NOT use Heinz mustard around here! But we do sometimes like the Heinz Jalapeno Ketchup!!! (smile)

I'm not kidding. As much as I love the Heinz commercials where the whole 'family' of their products has wiener dogs in buns running toward them, for the most part the Heinz boy dumping the French's girl just annoys me to death! Be true, Heinz! Please! I'll never get over that, I swear. Yeah, yeah. If you ever even saw it you're thinking it didn't stick with you, right? I guess I love some commercials, what can I say?

My sister Sue phoned TWICE today. More about that...

Adeena and I had our BIG DAY of running errands for Marilyn! First we were off to Seaside, Oregon. But before we could leave I had work issues popping up like mad! I had to tell Rich I'd contact him in the afternoon about our weekend Press Release/News item for the website. I couldn't reach Kate before departing, so planned to call her from the car. I promised Christine I'd get back to her later. And I forget what else. Hahaha. I'm so valuable. Right.

We finally left and drove highway 30 to Cornelius Pass -- you go through St. Johns (where we stopped at the Lombard drive-through Starbucks for drinks and goodies) and across the St. Johns bridge, heading past the Sauvie Island bridge. This connects with the 'quick way' to head to Seaside (as opposed to the Astoria direction).

At one point I'm chatting on the phone with Kate and we have to actually pull over so I can hear her better. Then she emails me CODE from the eNewsletter that was going out -- so I can write additional code to 'fix' her issue for her. I just couldn't explain it without seeing it. And it was faster to write the code myself, so I did. Using my phone for a hotspot and my iPad to do the actual code. Hahaha. I love this stuff, I honestly really do!

Before we took off Marilyn had called about me checking the Starlight Parade script one last time, which I did -- after Marilyn sent me the Word version that I could edit, as opposed to the PDF I had from Jessica. I did find some mistakes. And I rearranged the order of some Copy. This has a bumping order. PA announcers will start by reading the first paragraph. Or, the first line of the first paragraph. It depends on how much time they have! So if essential information is in the second paragraph or (heaven forbid) the third one, I put that into the first. If that makes sense! For example, the band director's name(s) always goes in the first paragraph...

And I found a couple of spelling errors (easy fix). Plus suddenly I notice an eclipse event that says it's on August 17 instead of August 21! Oops! How did I miss THAT the first time around??? Hahaha. So I emailed that back to myself and Remotely moved it into the proper folder at the office...

It was overcast driving down. But the sun really came out while we were there, which was nice! We went directly to the liquor store where Kevin was holding a case for Marilyn and me (I'd arranged that via phone). He wasn't in, but the two women were ready with our order! Taco Time is CLOSED on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I'm sorry to report! So no crispy meat burritos for us! Hahaha.

From there we went to Riteaid near Safeway to get other items we needed. Adeena was dashing to the bathroom (long trip with Starbucks to drink!). I was on the phone with sister Sue. She was crying and unhappy -- she wanted Candy to take her back home. I now need the bathroom, so I have Adeena take the phone...

We got more IBgard pills (amazing product!!!). And I found darling sunglasses! I wasn't specifically looking for these, but they were there so I got a pair. I haven't bought new ones in years!

We also got coffee creamer, which we needed at home. And some minor items (I forget right now what).

Then we need to go drive to see the ocean! I'm wearing my new sunglasses by now. (smile) We jumped out and got photos, by the way. And I'd seen the Antique Mall that's on Broadway, so we drove back and parked and went in. I had it in my head to look for something that would work as a fur stole for my dress on Friday night -- the Old Hollywood theme.

Adeena has a full length, beautiful dress she's wearing! I can't wait to see the real deal (I saw photos). She's very excited about it!

We go in and find a leopard-spotted table runner I'm thinking I could buy. Yes, they do carry vintage clothing. And then we find a MINK STOLE. Adeena gasped when I put it on. Needless to say, it was perfect!!! So I call Marilyn and she says 'get it,' and the rest is history!

Then we're back on the road heading quickly home, as we both have work to do!

Adeena dropped me off and headed to work in the office. I threw on my 'new' stole and went over to show it to June and Jim. June asks if it has pockets -- I later read that this is the sign of a more superior stole, by the way. It's in beautiful condition. No 'bald' spots or bad lining.

Yes, yes, I know. It's so PC to avoid wearing fur these days. I still don't really understand it, if I'm being honest. Minks were raised for their fur. Most people still wear leather without feeling guilt. Anyway, I can't wait to wear it!

I sold Mom's fur right after she died. And though it was in bad shape, I've frequently regretted it. I think she's smiling down from heaven today -- as she would have loved this stole! It's going to make my outfit, paired with my 'Marilyn Monroe' style dress. I guess I fail at being PC... But this is so beautiful. I've got it hanging where you can't miss it in my bedroom! (smile)

Then I get right to work with Rich on the Press Release/News item, which I put up the second we finished it.

Next I get all the info for the Fleet page at the website and carefully fix it so I can add it. It was a ton of work. Christine checks it over and chats with me and I fix it all accordingly...

Candy came by to get her Seether tickets for Friday night. She bought one so she, Sharla and Dave can all three go. Marilyn and I will go there after the party and hopefully see her!

Candy also took Sir Mix tickets for Saturday night, even though she has a conflict. I hope she gets to come. I love his concerts! Marilyn and I will be there...

Marilyn was actually HOME by 7:00 tonight! HUGE SHOCK!!! She really wanted to avoid another long, long day...

She ate chicken (from last night) and I ate rice (from yesterday). And we were supposed to have more raspberries and cookies (molasses from Franz -- our faves!!!). But we were both so tired we went to sleep...

I had PERFECT blood sugar this morning: 95. Wow. Even after both raspberries and cookies before bed last night!!! Wow.

But these leg cramps are murder!!!

Marilyn has Court judging tomorrow -- I need to come in to work with Adeena. Marilyn gets her hair done in the evening and will come back to get me after that...

I have my all-important PA Meeting in the afternoon!

I need to head to bed now... We were watching "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" again tonight. Such fun!

Say! I'm pretty proud I can lift a box of SIX BIG BOTTLES of Margarita Watermelon (pre-mixed)! I carried it to the car in Seaside and into the house here in Portland -- and it's damn heavy!!!

Yes, Sue called again when I was home. She was VERY CONFUSED about her doctor appointment, which she told me was quite bad -- and Marilyn told me was NOT. Marilyn still gets the reports by email. (sigh)

And now it's 2:00 a.m. and I'm facing a very busy day! Just saying!

Sweetest of all dreams, my friends.

The day started out with Sheila have issues with Quickbooks -- yes, again. I can't make this stuff up (as we like to say). Donn jumped right in. I started consulting immediately with Donn. And Kris was right behind that, checking on things. Crazy morning spent on the phone, I have to tell you.

And my friend Rob was sending me text messages and nagging me about going to dinner Friday night. It's hard to make people understand how our schedules work right now. But then we talked for ages while we were both working at the same time. Finally we hung up so we could concentrate better. Hahaha.

Worked in there was texting to both Larry and Candy, trying to pin them down about wristbands. And to find out more about sister Sue and her new cell phone. That was a ton of text messages to find out that Sue has a new phone, the same number and still isn't answering calls. Nor does she have her voice mail set up.

Anyway, everybody wants wristbands, which is good (including Nicole, who also texted me). And it's possible Sue might want to go to the parade, too.

There are a number of IT concerns that need to be addressed and are wrapped around security issues. Annoying distraction considering how busy we are. I spent ages on it, anyway...

My fasting blood was again good this morning. And I was eating peanuts in the middle of the night. Hahaha. Which shows you that peanuts are, indeed, good for you. Marilyn used to eat them constantly, by the way.

Speaking of Marilyn, she just looks MARVELOUS right now! She's lost a LOT of weight and her hair looks great and she looks young and stylish.

She told me tonight this might have been one of her most intense days at work ever! She had a lengthy interview, some very important and intense meetings and a ton of other work to do. She was at the office until well past 10:00 p.m.

Meanwhile, I was working on website stuff for many hours today. I was sitting in front of my computer and working through a bunch of complicated things.

One page just wasn't displaying correctly! Calisa had told me about it after Carol had mentioned it to her. So I went through that code with a fine-toothed comb. Over and over and over again! I was remembering the days when one little piece of code could completely mess up how a page displayed. I cleaned up the code several times, but couldn't find anything. Finally I turned to David at Fish. And it was an issue at his end! So he fixed it for me. Those are hours I'm never getting back again. Hahaha. Oh well.

Carol provided the Copy for several pages and I updated it all as we went along. Today was not about Sanctioned Events. Well, I did make one change to a Sanctioned Event page, but it was pretty simple. The rest of it was all MAJOR pages of our site, so I was happy to work through it.

Marilyn called to tell me that tomorrow is lunch at Elmer's for the Court -- and she's planning to attend. So she wanted me to invite June to go. She also suggested inviting our sister Sue, but there was no getting in touch with either her or Larry. I tried calling and texting, but no luck.

We've done the Elmer's lunch before, and it's fun. Angel will be there as the Clown Prince. And the members of the Court have lunch, then help serve patrons, mingled with those there.

This is a great group of girls! I really enjoyed talking to them at the Board meeting. So I'm looking forward to this tomorrow.

Hopefully June will feel up to it. She's dealing with the aftermath of her own bursa injections (for her knees). She did what I did and did not take it easy yesterday after her shots! And she was paying for it today. So I guess we'll see how she's doing. If she doesn't go, Marilyn is planning to come and pick me up.

Adeena and I wrote back and forth today. She's working on the Starlight script and plugging away at it. It's not easy work, but you can punch it out in a few days if you need to (which most people who do it have had to do). She's on deadline, but right now we're ALL on deadlines! It's that time of year.

It was COLD again today. I was barely avoiding getting chilled.

My friend Mark and I texted back and forth for a bit in the afternoon. If he's not tied up tomorrow, he might come to Elmer's, too. (The lunch is at noon.) When patrons order the Rose Meal, it benefits the festival!

It was amusing this morning! They're doing something at the office with Marilyn and needed a photo of her with Colin! And he just hates having his picture taken. It wasn't that easy to get any decent pictures. Hahaha. But Marilyn was sure looking good!

I got the recycling out tonight, barely. I was just so worn out. I know it's not physical, as I didn't get any steps to mention today. But mentally I was exhausted. By around 10:00 p.m. I was really done...

My blood sugar was good all day long! Of course, I wasn't really hungry, so I barely ate anything until tonight. And then I had cheese and crackers and some peanuts. Earlier I had a slice of bread. Haha.

I can't think what else I'm forgetting, but I'm off to bed. I need to get up and wash my hair in the morning before going to the lunch at Elmer's.

I was just thinking about reading all that code today. You know, I really do enjoy it! I don't get much opportunity these days. I used to be looking at code every single day a couple of years ago...

I need to post about The Big Valley that I saw part of today. About blue for boys and pink for girls. Hahaha. More about that soon, I hope.

Tonight is garbage night -- thankfully not 'real' garbage!

And now, to bed!

I started my day with happy news -- my fasting blood sugar result was 131, which I swear is one of the best numbers I've had since starting on insulin. (I might be wrong about this, but that number certainly has been this good recently, anyway.)

Yes, Leslie did have me change from 26 units to 30 (of insulin) after my recent appointment (last Friday). But I was still high -- because steroids raise blood sugar, of course. That's a sign, I think, that my body is processing the steroid shots. I hope that means the shots will take total effect soon, as I'm still limping from hip pain. But the bursa injection IS like a miracle medication! I just think all the time about how it's helped me in the past.

Of course the current inclement weather is no help. Getting COLD is what gives me these flare-ups in the first place. And, boy, was it ever cold today!!! I had to keep turning up the heat! Normally I'd never need to use the furnace in the month of May! It was rainy and COLD. I went out to the garage for something (maybe when I was taking out garbage) and it was like a meat locker out there (brr). Clearly the dampness is no help to my health, aside from being cold...

Marilyn was home late again tonight -- 9:00-ish. She didn't even get a chance to work on her formation map for GFP until well past 5:00 p.m., she was so busy.

I discovered a bunch of website errors I needed to correct today. Part of the problem is new hands on the pages -- and the site is complicated enough to require experience. And even if you have past experience with the site, it can be hard remembering all of the little nuances involved with each page!

When we're doing a Sanctioned Event page, for example, you have TWO places in the right hand column where you must check-mark Sanctioned Event. If you forget, things don't display as they should in every area. And every page has a header banner across the top -- and this also needs to be selected as the Featured Image of that given page. This means, for example, that when you do a Search on that page, the featured image will display after the search in the results. Otherwise a generic gold rose background appears...

I know these sound like little things, but my job as webmaster is to make everything look right in every version of the website! It's amusing to me that until I got my new iPhone, I didn't tend to view our festival website with my phone. I'd do most things on the computer, of course. And with my iPad, too. But it's a whole different look with the phone -- and most people are looking look at it with their phones these days! Which is why we've made numerous tweaks to the website for exactly this purpose...

I'm proud of what we've accomplished this year with the website! But the smallest mistake changes elements that we who do the code might miss. For example, if you miss one of those Sanctioned Event check-marks, then it doesn't turn the Calendar links BLUE -- which indicate a Sanctioned Event. We have a legend that shows certain colors for each type of event (parade, walk or run, sanctioned event and so on), so things need to match accordingly.

And now we do a lot more ACTUAL CODING than we did previously -- so you need to be able to read some basic HTML now. WordPress does NOT do away with the need for HTML or CSS! We're using it all the time at our website. So no matter how much people shy away from using it, it's a fact of life. And why not learn a little about it? I don't believe it's complicated to use. I'm really not a genius! Seeing that movie Hidden Figures reminded me of how little I actually know. Hahaha. I can't read a lick of computer programming, for example. (I recall a time when Marilyn wanted to learn it. But she's far more mathematical than I am and always has been! Maybe I'm speaking out of turn, but I think being left-handed is part of my issue. And I really believe in the 'right brain, left brain' thing, by the way...)

The good thing about HTML and CSS is that we who speak and write English are viewing this code IN ENGLISH. You don't have to learn a computer language to use it! I'm always surprised how daunted people are by the addition of a few symbols and brackets...

Well, I didn't mean to run on so much. But this is where I was today. I need to be sure to spend more time with the others working on the website and help them to really learn these aspects of the work. And continue to document things and make them available at our How To website. I'm getting there more all the time!

On the other hand, I was reminded today how little I personally understand Word! I just don't use it hardly ever -- nor can I see much reason for me to do so going forward. I was going to make a page of images using Word then make it into a PDF. I decided it was just as easy to create an image that contains several images and load that up, so that's probably what I'll do.

I had a bunch of changes to do for two different pages today and I spent hours on both! But I'm happy with the results.

Christine contacted me about setting up the phones for festival weekends when we'll be open on Saturdays and Sundays. The way Shoretel phones work, you do this on the back end of the phones, via the Phone Server. And I'm the one who does all of that for the office. It's not really complicated. But it requires you to have access to the Phone Server -- and you can only do that locally, if that makes sense. Which means I can do it Remotely, but need to be logged on where it appears as if I'm working locally.

Then it's just a matter of knowing where you go to change the settings. I have -- OF COURSE -- a detailed instruction sheet that tells me exactly what steps to follow. And I could probably do it without looking at that, as I'm pretty familiar with the steps. But it's helpful to know I have that reference source, just in case. And I believe others could follow the steps, if need be. Or the support people at Inflow could do this for us, of course -- but that's an emergency method.

Speaking of support people, I had to email Brit and David about a weird website glitch today. I've already heard back from Brit at 9:30 (we're not the only ones working late, clearly... hahaha). And she, too, couldn't figure out what I was asking about. She said she'd defer to David. I'm curious to hear what he says, because it appears to be done correctly -- but it certainly isn't displaying that way! (No, WorPress isn't perfect. Haha.)

Marilyn DID manage to do her Grand Floral Parade formation map today -- and it's very complex. It can't be done on a device, unfortunately. The thing is, you need to have UNLIMITED numbers of layers. Plus it's handy to be able to really zoom in very close. Both of those things are restricted on an iPad, I'm afraid. As I've said to her before, there are things about Apps on devices that I really love! And if you could combine the best parts of computer software and device Apps, you'd really end up with something amazing! But it is what it is...

I'm PROUD OF HER that she did this work without my help. I'm not suggesting, again, that I'm a genius about it. But I'm simply more experienced doing the work. I don't touch it quite as often as I used to, but this time of year I generally am using it on a daily basis or close. And often it's just a matter of practice that makes it easier. Marilyn doesn't get as much opportunity to use it, even if she wanted to! I don't know how she ever gets actual hands-on work done, considering her meeting schedule! As always, she amazes me.

I contacted our niece Candy and nephew Larry today, to see if they wanted wristbands for Opening Night to ride the rides. Both responded, as did Nicole (Candy's daughter -- our great niece). I got a number from Larry and hope I get one from Candy tomorrow. As of today we were nine days out from the festival (!!!). Yes, I'm still in denial!

My friend June got her bursa shots in her knees today! (woo hoo) AND she found the shoes we were looking at yesterday -- two pairs in different colors -- at another Walmart! Her poor feet are so swollen she can barely get shoes on them. And when she does it's terribly painful for her.

Marilyn and I deal with constant swelling of our feet, too, so we totally understand. We're not as bad as June, though, poor dear.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention: Sister Sue apparently has a new phone. Which is why I can never reach her calling her on the old phone (makes sense). I need to MAKE A POINT of asking Larry for the new number tomorrow. It would be nice to talk to her now and then. But he indicated that she's much worse now. So for all I know she doesn't even think about either of us...

He couldn't say if Sue would be attending the parade this year. That's a shame, as she loves going. But maybe she's just not up to it. I couldn't say, as I don't even remember the last time I talked to Sue.

Marilyn and I ate Reser's sausage with Tillamook cheese for dinner. And raspberries and (fat free) half and half for dessert.

She went to lunch today (with Marcia and Gail) and was able to eat -- and it's all about those peppermint oil capsules! As I said before, these are a miracle for Marilyn.

I can't believe I didn't blog about Marilyn's gastro appointment on Tuesday!!! What was I thinking about? We went to that first thing BEFORE WORK yesterday. And she mentioned her amazing results with IBard -- and the doctor said something like, "I would have gotten there eventually" (!!!). Eventually, doctor??? When would THAT have been??? After she'd suffered more? Or when? And the nurse gave her a COUPON they have in the office to get these pills for $2 off. (They are spendy, believe me.) Are you kidding me? At least he didn't brush aside using the pills. But he KNEW about them and never suggested them??? Good grief.

I can't even say any more about that. Except to say that Marilyn always seems to know more than our various doctors. She was always a jump or two ahead of Sue's many doctors. She just happens to be great at research -- and has an amazing, logical mind. We make a lot of jokes about Dr. Marilyn in our family, anyway. Hahaha.

I took out garbage today and did some laundry. Real life is hard this time of year.

Well, it's nearly 3:00 a.m., so I'm off to bed.

I was awake before 6:30 this morning. Marilyn had executive meeting this morning super early. I'd been thinking I could go in with her to try and help Jessica with her computer issues which had come up at 10:30 the night before (via text)...

But Marilyn suggested I come to the office with Adeena, which worked out GREAT, by the way! So on her way to the office she picked me up. I was dressed in black slacks and my summery pink and red flowered top that I've had forever. It's flimsy, so you have to wear something under it that can be semi-seen. Very long, flowing sleeves. Anyway, I thought it looked nice! That was for our afternoon/evening event today.

Marilyn was wearing a FABULOUS dress (!!!) with her wonderful boots and did she look fantastic! Wow.

Actually, I thought Marilyn, Adeena and I all looked nice for the event. (smile)

I no sooner got to the office than I was approached by SEVERAL people about IT-related subjects. I'd wanted to go off for Starbucks, but was tied up for some time!

Poor hurting Donn (who has a bad back) had to come in to help me. I had him Profile a totally different computer for Jessica. Ashley drove him in and helped him move equipment (as he can't lift right now). She's such a sweet girl. I can't say how much I appreciated Donn's help today!

I got Calisa to help Christie with her PDF issue. I helped Jessica P. with her issue about the CityFair email address and accessing it. Plus several other things came up.

My hips were paining me a lot today. That staircase really kills me during a flare-up!!!

I got an email from David at Fish about how to work with the Volunteer form. It was hard to decipher (and contained some inaccurate info), but I eventually reasoned it all out! Then I wrote down how to do it step by step -- and shared it with David and Brit, as well...

I was delighted when I finally got it to work! And actually Ashley was a big help! She sat with me and was very supportive as I worked through the code. Again, such a sweet young girl. She's very into horses and an amazing rider, too.

Donn did several other tasks for me, which, again, I appreciated more than I can say. Coming to work in that much pain is impressive to me.

It was nice to see everyone -- and they are always so warm with me. I like the Team I work with.

We got our clothes today. The blue pullovers are very nice! It's logo wear -- part of our annual casual uniform. We also got SHOES for the first time ever this year. How nice is that?

The event was nice. Held at a partner brewery, both in and out of doors (on the terrace). The weather was sunny with blue skies and hot -- perfect for this event. Our wine label was revealed and our beer label, too. And some of the 1977 Trail Blazers (the Championship team) were there, too.

A big crowd showed up. The wine was good and the food (snacks) was great.

After that we headed back to the office. Adeena was kind enough to take me home -- stopping at Safeway so I could pick up Chinese food for dinner on the way. She's been such a big help both at work and personally recently. Both Marilyn and I appreciate it.

I never had time to see June either yesterday or today. And tomorrow is the Board Meeting. So maybe I'll get to see her on Friday... I still need to check out her computer.

Tonight late (around 9:30-ish) Jessica phoned and was having more computer trouble. So Marilyn and I headed back to the office. I worked on her computer, trying a few things. For her Outlook I deleted the .ost file so it could rebuild. This is often quite helpful. She was having some other software crashing, too.

Guess what? It turns out it was damn Adobe (!!!) UPDATING software!!! I can't say how many times Adobe has screwed up computers I'm working with when it does updates. I'm not sure why that is, but it's almost always true! So that was undoubtedly the issue tonight for Jessica. Anyway, things were running smoothly, finally.

And when she had finished her work and was ready to go, Marilyn and I drove her to her car in the parking garage. Then headed back home.

Time to head to bed! We've had a very long day (and it's nearly 1:00 now). I was yawning like crazy when Adeena drove me home. But I got my second wind when we went back in to the office tonight!

Marilyn is amazing, as always. Jessica was working away late -- shades of Centennial year! And I was proud to do my part. It's what I do, after all.

Not sure how tomorrow will go.

I need to phone in Henry's pills (he's nearly out!!!).

I did vote. We need to drop off our ballots (school election).

Can't think what else I'm forgetting. Tomorrow is another busy day! Time to get in bed.

Sleep well!

I was very busy today. Partly with IT and very much with the website.

I was really pleased with my website work yesterday -- especially with the Volunteer form. Not so much today! What I was trying to do there is apparently IMPOSSIBLE using the widget we have loaded. And as far as I can see I can't just CODE the form -- I'm stuck with the widget. (sigh) I spent AGES on this today before I realized I was stuck.

I reached Brit by phone, but she and David were headed to a meeting. I wrote a very DETAILED email to her. She replied by asking about another page entirely that had nothing to do with what I'm working on. Either I was clear enough (seriously???), or...

I ended up frustrated, to say the least.

Caitlin had a phone issue. A man accidentally was trying to send a message to Rich, and somehow managed to automate his system to call over and over and over again. Caitlin wanted help to cancel it, but I knew when she called that it wasn't OUR END. But I had her get in touch with Inflow (our phone support people), who told her the same thing. Hard to believe there's no way to cancel an incoming call in this day and age. I never did hear the outcome of that one...

I did festival work until just before 4:00. Then I went and finished my cleaning in the Family Room from yesterday. It's looking quite nice, I think! It's only one room, but that's better than none. I worked slowly and carefully, trying to give my hips a break. The pain is bad, but I'm dealing with it okay, I think. (But I'm really looking forward to those shots on Friday!!!)

I'd talked to Adeena, who was coming by to take me shopping. I had time after cleaning to take a shower and wash my hair -- and considering it was pretty warm in here today, I really needed it. Hahaha. I was a sweatball. I was mostly ready to go when she arrived promptly at 6:00 p.m. (as we'd planned).

We went to pick up Marilyn's prescription first. Marilyn had had me call this morning to make sure they wouldn't send it back. But their policy is strict! You have a certain number of days to get it, then back it goes, no matter what. Seriously? Anyway, we got it, so it's fine.

Then we went to Freddies and I got several things. And we had Starbucks, which was very nice!

Shopping is fun with Adeena! I really enjoy it. We chat, plus she's a huge help with remembering what I need to buy.

Then we headed to Safeway, hoping to get food at the deli. But Marilyn had said we'd be too late, and we were. Oh well.

We headed back home and were just getting there when Marilyn called with an IT emergency in the office! I can't remember exactly what time it was, but I'd say around 7:00-ish. So Adeena kindly drove me straight downtown to the office.

Jessica's computer had disconnected from the network. That same computer had done the same thing to Katie when it was her computer. (sigh) I tried to walk Marilyn through fixing it over the phone, but when I couldn't do that I knew I needed to put my hands on it.

I tried a couple of things, then finally got the batch file (I keep it on a jump drive) and ran it again on the computer.

Meanwhile Marilyn and Jessica were going through the timed line-up of the GFP (which Marilyn has been trying to get done for days now).

It didn't take me all that long to fix the issue, once again. I think the phone at Jessica's station needs replacing, but we'll save that for another day! As long as it's working, we'll leave it alone.

So Adeena and I were hanging around while they kept working. When they finished I headed home with Marilyn and Adeena went on home to Battle Ground. It was past 9:00, so I felt bad for Adeena, who had missed dinner at home. But I also felt sorry for Jessica, who was still in the office working when we three left. And for Marilyn who has an early morning meeting first thing tomorrow!

Adeena might come to drive me in for the EVENT we have tomorrow. We'll see how that goes... Marilyn only plans to be there for an hour, as she has so much work to do in the office. And Jessica isn't going at all, she has such a long list.

Thursday night is our annual Board Meeting. My 'joke' is ALWAYS: There are only two excuses for missing a board meeting -- you're in the hospital, or... YOU'RE DEAD. (I'm only half-joking, really. I think staff needs to always attend board meetings. We have four a year, one each season. The spring meeting is pretty important, right before the start of the festival.)

I'm really tired tonight. I think I'll go straight to bed after I blog. (It's now around 12:30...)

Poor Marilyn. She's felt under the weather and has a sore throat. I hope she's not getting sick. She really doesn't have time for it, for one thing. And she doesn't deserve it. We've worked hard on getting more sleep recently. And eating better and better.

Speaking of, she looks FABULOUS. She's lost a bunch of weight (slowly and carefully), and is into her smaller clothes. She just gave me a bag of clothes to get rid of, which I'm offering to cousin Linda. (Linda's not sure they'll be big enough to fit her, but I suggested she give them a try, anyway. Some of them seem nearly new -- and very stylish.)

Marilyn works out, too. And the other day I felt her arms (can't recall why), and they're like IRON. Wow. She's really got some muscles going! I just think she looks so good.

I did go outside for a few minutes today to take photos of the pink dogwood before it goes over. The blossoms are already starting to go. Today was sunny, warm (hot!) and the sky was blue and beautiful.

Time for bed. Sweet dreams, all!

Saturday, April 22:
We got up early with no trouble and packed up, put on our uniforms and drove straight to the Blessing of the Festival at St. John Fisher (a very modern Catholic Church in SW Portland), where Archbishop Alexander Sample became the first Catholic archbishop ever to bless the festival. (It's a pretty big deal to get an archbishop to your event!) The weather coming home was good and stayed that way for the entire event (there's always an outdoor rose planting ceremony after the service). Good service -- and the Archbishop was very impressive! Plus our President, Brett, did a good job (with the speech Marilyn wrote and he tweaked).

And the Court looked so nice in their pretty dresses! We have a VERY diverse group this year. (Click to see the full size.)


Most of the young women on the court are there (there are 15 in all -- this is NOT a mandatory event for them to attend). And that's Jeff and Brett in the center (Jeff is left).

Once again, our Friday/Saturday morning mini-vacation at the beach was really LOVELY! We always hoped we'd take MORE quick trips like this to the house. Now we want to try. We realized that if we go the 'fast' way, we can be back in Portland a full hour (or more) sooner. There's no reason we couldn't stay over and still GO TO WORK (!!!) the following day, if we got up early enough...

We got Chinese takeout on Saturday for dinner. And watched our usual METV shows that night.

Sunday, April 23:
We did end up going to take cans/bottles to the BottleDrop (from both work and home).

We also went to Walmart -- the NICE (fancy) one over in Washington. We haven't been there in AGES! We went around 8:00-ish and were back around 10:00 p.m.

Our game finished up at 4:00 a.m. -- we both actually got up to check it out. Hahaha. I WON (!!!) the Mayor's Race for the very first time, which was exciting for me. Yes, we're still playing SimCity BuildIt. (But we no longer do the 'magic midnight' routine. In fact, it's been ages since we did it...)

Monday, April 24:
I stayed home today, good thing. I had terrible stomach pains much of the day! This started when I had my Activia yogurt for breakfast with a cup of coffee. Decidedly a gastro thing. I was having gastro issues on Saturday night, too (and didn't sleep that well for getting up and down). I'm sure it's because of being sick last week. I wasn't eating or drinking normally, or keeping a normal schedule at all.

It was a cold and miserable day. (ugh) Rain and more rain! Just nasty.

I finally forced down a bunch of apple cider vinegar in the afternoon. Not sure why I didn't do that earlier! We swear by it, and it does always seem to help.

Even though I didn't feel all that great (awful pain on and off), I still got a TON of festival website work done today! In fact, I'm really pleased by what I accomplished!

Part of it was making a new banner for one of the concerts. The one we'd been sent was pretty inappropriate for the festival, I'm afraid. So when we got complaints I made a new banner that we put up instead...

Then I set up an entirely NEW event page for our Eclipse Experience event we're having August 21 at Waterfront Park. It needed an Event Info page, so I got to test out that complicated procedure, using my incomplete (!!!) notes. At one point I was confused, so I phoned Brit. But she needed to go to a meeting. So I just stuck with it myself and reasoned it out. (woo hoo)

Tonight I made a banner for another concert on my iPad (!!!). Then I logged in to the site on my iPad, too!!! No, it's not easy to work on our website on your iPad, but it CAN be done. I totally proved that tonight! I added the banner I made and changed out the Copy/code and the event details. So it's now Live.

Marilyn had a massage therapy session with Amanda in Donald, Oregon tonight. Here's a photo of her back after her cupping therapy. (Click to see the larger image.)



The bruises are NOT painful. In fact, Marilyn was trying to put into words her experience after the cups were removed. Apparently it was difficult to describe, but she felt like she was floating. Cupping REALLY, REALLY WORKS for her to help with her tightness and pain. You can read a lot of supportive things about it, but also a lot of negative things. Western medicine is reluctant to accept alternative medicines, even if they help. Maybe especially if they help! Pharmaceutical companies have no reason to support things that don't make them money.

Marilyn said she knows her gastro expert will say the same about her taking peppermint capsules for her IBS-D, even though it's worked like some kind of miracle. He'll say it's in her head. Been there, heard that over many years. But she can't just PRETEND this is working! It's been a serious issue for many months.

And now she can even EAT AND DRINK on many days without a problem! That was impossible for ages.

Well, I'm off to bed, even though I've barely covered the past three days. I'll try and write more soon.

Sweet dreams!!!

<textarea disable name="html" id="html" cols="30" rows="6">

.entryHolder {
padding-right: 14px;
padding-left: 4px;
}
<textarea>

The tag is textarea

I disable it so no one can type over the content

You have to name it:
name="whatevername"

You have to give it an ID:
id="whateverid"

The cols (columns) command makes the width

The rows command makes the height

Some time back (I'm not sure when), my customized theme at LiveJournal stopped displaying correctly. For whatever reason, the text would just run off the edge of the text area of my blog. I doubt most of you have ever viewed my blog the way I do, but I use 'Mochachino' that uses the Smooth Sailing theme. I've added my own background image of books (in brown) -- which is not an especially lovely image, but I've had it for so long that I'm sentimentally attached to it (it's what I like to see when I go to my blog).

So for all this time (again, I don't recall how long -- but months and months, at the very least) I've just lived with it. But today I was messing around with CSS for work, and suddenly decided to see if I could add CSS here at LJ and fix the problem. And guess what? It worked!

I've loved CSS (which stands for Cascading Style Sheets) ever since I first learned how to use it (years and years ago). When I first learned HTML (which stands for Hypertext Markup Language) I learned it WITHOUT CSS -- but now they teach both together (as they should!).

Anyway, using CSS basically is how you determine the way HTML elements will be displayed on screen, (paper or other media). CSS saves a TON of work. Style sheets can control layout for multiple web pages all at the same time. Or you can use more than one style sheet for different purposes (I used to have different style sheets for various menus at our old festival website, for example).

In this case, I needed to add what's called padding to the main area of my blog (so text wouldn't overlap the right edge). The code looks like this:
.entryHolder { padding-right: 14px; padding-left: 4px; }

(Total aside. Isn't that little 'textarea' box awesome? It lets me display HTML/CSS without having to code everything! I love it.)

Yeah, yeah. That's meaningless to anyone not interested in CSS. But if you do use CSS, you'll totally get what was going on here. (smile)

Anyway, I haven't tweaked my LJ blog in some time, so this made me so very happy!!!

First off, the Henry Tudor Cat update!!! (grin) He's being a very, very, very good cat. Which has been true this entire time, of course. He's pretty sick of being treated, but still cooperates. And as far as I can tell (fingers crossed), he's NOT scratching at all, much less his eye. I sure hope it stays that way!

Marilyn and I didn't get in to the office until past 11:00 a.m., what with one thing and another (and Henry). That's okay. We did get a bunch of work done, even so.

In my case, I FINALLY was able to take the eNewsletter I'd created for the Grand Floral Walk (GFW) and make it work as HTML inside Outlook. It's a fairly nifty trick, I'm telling you!!! And, remarkably enough, it does NOT require any special software to do. At some point I need to teach others how to do it, but probably not this year. It's just too damn complicated for me to write out until I have more free time.

I also 'found' the permalink for one of our recent eNewsletters that our president, Frank, had wanted -- and that Carol had promised (???) to Executive board members. (Um, why would you DO THAT if you weren't sure you could provide it? I mean, Carol couldn't have come up with it on her own. And she hadn't discussed it with me when she told them she'd get it. Oh well. I guess it's a good thing I can figure this stuff out!)

We used to ALWAYS provide a permalink for our eNewsletters between 2008 and 2013. Amazingly enough, it's provided by our eNewsletter service, CoolerEmail -- and that's a pretty wonderful thing for them to do! Anyway, I worked on our templates (yet again) today, and added a place for the permalink to go.

We have a couple of options, actually. We can put the eNewsletter up at our website and link it there. I'd been having issues with that previously, but TODAY (in fact tonight -- just minutes ago!!!) I figured out how to make it work! That's a very big breakthrough, I'm telling you.

I reasoned it out while deciding I wanted a permalink for that GFW eNewsletter -- and because we're not sending it out via CoolerEmail, we needed another host.

I feel like something of a (very minor!) genius today, I have to tell you. I'm pretty convinced that even FISH wouldn't have had some of the answers to this stuff I got done. And happily I didn't have to ASK ANYBODY ELSE how to do it.

Sometimes I'm like a dog with a bone, seriously. Hahaha.

The work today was one thing, but Marilyn, Adeena and I took a day trip to the beach! We drove down the 'fast' way (which only takes around 90 minutes). The weather in Portland was WET today, and we did have rain on the drive. But it was dry in Seaside, believe it or not!

We did invite sister Sue to come along, but her leg was bothering her (from her fall of weeks ago), so she declined. I totally understand that. When you're sore, it's just not pleasant to take a long ride in a car!

We three stopped at the house and I actually changed into longer pants (I'd had on what I call my clam digger jeans, that go to just below the knee) and from sandals into boots. Just to stay warm enough.

We drove in and went to the Shilo Inn bar for food and a drink (introducing Adeena to Lemon Drops!). We love to go there, because it's right on the beach and the view is fabulous!!! (Marilyn had the waiter take a photo of us so she could text it to Jeff and tell him he should have been there with us!)

Gosh, we really like their food! We went there to celebrate back when we first got our house, by the way. Such a nice place.

After we ate we went over and played Fascination. Adeena had never played before! She and Marilyn both won several times -- and even I managed to win twice. We gave Adeena the tickets to start her collection. Someday she'll be able to get something nice with them. We need to trade some in, as we've got an awful lot now...

Then we went to the candy store and I bought some Sea Foam (which I adore and haven't had in ages!). I totally FORGOT to have Adeena try it (Marilyn is not a fan).

And finally we got ice cream, before heading back to Portland. We needed to get Adeena back before 7:30 and were actually in the parking lot of the festival office by 7:14 p.m.

Then Marilyn and I talked over the project she needed my help with -- the formation map for the Grand Floral Parade. I went upstairs to get started with that, and she was working on her many projects downstairs.

The cleaning guy was there as we were working. It's a bit distracting, but I suppose not as bad as when the staff is around (always needing things).

Henry came in at some point and is lying in his chair behind me. Colin, however, refuses to settle down. He keeps messing with things in my bathroom and making a bunch of noise. I guess he wants some attention. Colin, timing is everything! (smile)

Finally we both hit the wall and decided to come home...

It looks like I'll be staying home AGAIN this week. It's not like I can't get a TON of work done here.

First thing tomorrow morning I'll continue my work on that map. Marilyn needs to have it by afternoon for a meeting with Gary.

I have some website stuff I really need to get to! I can't believe I haven't done that, yet. And I should check in with Marissa and Katie on parade scripts, too...

And now I need to teach Kate how to code the permalink into the eNewsletters. Ideally I'd like to Remote in and watch her work on an eNewsletter, seeing as we had some coding issues last week again. I think I need to see what it is she does that messes up the code so I can help her avoid that. I guess it could be easy to cut pieces of code (???). It wasn't that hard to reason out last week. And Kate seems very eager to do the work without help (I get that). But it is my job to make sure these eNewsletters end up working the way we need them to.

Well, I guess it's time for bed, seeing as it's going on 2:00 a.m.

I still can't believe we got away for a few hours to the beach. How lovely! Yes, all three of us had a lot of work we could have been doing -- but sometimes a few hours of recreation and make all the difference, we find. And we're all willing to put in early and late (and long) hours to make up for it...

Anyway! Goodnight!

First off, it's nearly 3:00 a.m.

I have a stomach ache. Not sure why.

And I'm really, really, really TIRED. I've been tired all day. I know it's just a week and I can get through this, but I can't deny I'm tired. And we have a busy weekend facing us, so I doubt I'll get much rest then, either.

Talked to both sister Sue and June today.

It's crazy at work for all of us right now. Today was City Hall (Staff and the Board goes there every year right before the start of festival), but I missed it. I heard it went well. We also had Kick-Off today (late afternoon/evening) and I also missed that. Again, I heard it went well...

My work on the eNewsletter for Grand Floral Walk? I thought I was pretty well DONE with it last night, but that wasn't the case at all. I was actually pissed off about it, to be entirely honest. I don't know WHY I thought I'd get the clean Copy period for this. Our staff can NEVER do anything without tweaking and tweaking and tweaking. Over and over and over. It's been one of my main frustrations in my work for years now. I'm surprised we're EVER done with something! We're notoriously bad at letting go of a product and calling it good.

Turns out that aside from all the Copy changes (and -- surprise! -- yet another logo change) that there was an issue with the bullet coding! I actually found that REALLY INTERESTING. I kept looking at my code for the bullets and trying to reason out WHY IN HELL it would display correctly after it went through our eNewsletter service...

The good news? I finally reasoned it out! It was about the code that's specifically for devices (mobile coding -- for cell phones and tablets). If you code, you've never seen coding this crazy to make a simple <li> (bullet) display right!

Here's an example:
<li class="iOS" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;margin: 0;text-align: left;color: #414042; font-size: 17px;line-height: 22px; letter-spacing: 0em; font-weight: normal;">Giveaways at the start and finish areas</li>

THIS IS JUST GREAT!!! More than HALF of my blog entry has disappeared!!! WTF???

Wow, I wish I remembered all of the rest of this. I guess I'll just have to try and recreate it... Seriously??? Thanks, LJ. Thanks.

I know I mentioned more about the eNewsletter, but I can't recall exactly what. Let's just say that I wasn't all that happy about the way things happened. And by the way, when you're expecting a lot of additional work to be done, perhaps you might be respectful in dealing with people. Yeah, I'm only a volunteer, so my time is all free. But still. (Of course, we can all afford to be respectful ALL OF THE TIME, regardless of our expectations.)

I was hard on Marissa today -- but apologized more than once. She's amazing and I love working with her. And knowing her. She's always pleasant and supportive and warm.

Today was the day staff and the board go to City Hall right before the start of the festival (an annual event). I missed it. I heard it went well. I also missed the Kick-Off event today. I heard that went well, too.

I spent hours doing what any teenager could probably do in half and hour (or less). Here's an example of the video work:
1) Finding ways to download video from online (they don't make this easy, by the way, as they don't want you to do it!)
2) Finding ways to convert the format to .wmv (which is necessary for using it with PowerPoint)
3) Finding ways to clip video shorter

Then often when I clip a video the software will change the format -- and I have to convert it all over again!

Guess what? A very DEMANDING Henry just got in my lap here at the computer. He probably wonders WHY I'm blogging all over again (so do I!!!). He's purring like mad.

Gee, it's now 4:00 a.m. And no hair colored. Clearly it's not happening.

I had a ton more, about what's up with Henry and Marilyn's long, long day. But I'm now toast and quitting this. I just can't rebuild the damn entry. I'm too annoyed and too tired.

Good night.

To be clear, it's around 1:00 a.m. now... Marilyn and I were dead tired around 10:00 p.m. -- and had finished our late dinner with some chocolate cake (well deserved, I think). So we decided we needed a nap (as usual). And until minutes ago, that's what I was doing (and what, hopefully, Marilyn is still doing).

She had so much going on today that she was supposed to be in more than one place at a time! Some days it's nearly impossible to imagine her schedule. I'm not kidding. So many things simply can't get done without her being involved. She had another speech today, which was quite successful from what she told me. I'm glad!

But she had a lot of frustrations, too. I'm sorry about that.

I spent more than half my day on festival work -- some of it very intense. I had a bunch of deadlines that I wasn't hearing about UNTIL TODAY (seriously???). The fact that I miss Communications Team meetings all the time is a bad thing. There's no easy way for me to catch up. Marilyn apologized that she hadn't done a recap, but it seems to me SOMEONE ELSE BESIDES HER could manage to send that out! Does she have to do everything, for heavens sake??? I'm not sure who should assume that task, but it's unfortunate nobody seems capable of managing it.

Anyway, I got a bit burned when decisions were made that impact the eNewsletter without my participation. Look, all I'm saying is that I'd like to see the eNewsletter being done without my participation on at least some level. I believe I have quite a bit of expertise and experience when it comes to the subject. Maybe I'm wrong. What the hell. Anyway, that was a bitter part of my day...

Sometimes I feel like throwing up my hands and telling people to just do it without me, if that's the way they want it. Go ahead, do what you want with the eNewsletter -- but don't come running to ME with your various issues and problems. If you can figure this stuff out by yourself without consulting me, how about you do it all on your own? Of course, I'd never do that, no matter how annoyed I get. Or how I end up feeling I'm not being respected. Because I would never leave them struggling (and never have). Every time there are deadlines that need to be met -- or problems that have to be dealt with -- I'm there. Just as I was today. With the same level of professionalism and concern that you'd find from any of the paid staff. Because, after all, it's my job. And I take it very seriously. And I know I'm counted on, regardless of the rest of it. And, okay, no pity-party, because I'd like to think I'm above that. It's just that this time of year things can be annoying (which means people can be annoying). And this might not be intentional, but I suppose it doesn't matter if it is or not, when you get right down to it. I just need to suck it up.

I'm VERY PROUD of the way I did one of the pages that I felt needed an additional layer of offset to the Copy. I decided to use the GREEN color that appears all over the website. It meant inline coding, as I don't have access to the style sheet for the 'new' website (the way I did for the old one).

If you understand coding at all, using CSS generally means creating a style sheet. Inside this, you design the 'pretty' part of your website that will be applied -- the way you used to style in the old days using HTML. I love CSS. And style sheets are pretty damn awesome! But there are ways to still apply code by using inline coding -- the way I did today.

Most of our staff can't read code or really write it. And that's fine. But it does mean I'm the only one who can easily do what I did today -- without turning to FISH for their help. And, frankly, we're simply not going to go to them for every little bit of special code we might want to add. It wouldn't make sense financially! Or time-wise, either. So while it's really no big deal to turn some of the text green as I did, I think it looks quite good and stands out nicely -- and helped make the intent of the Copy more clear. And it doesn't take long to do it.

And, again, I do love to code!

I don't get many opportunities anymore to do raw coding, so it's actually fun to do! I want to add this to my 'cheat sheet' so others can use it. (A few people on our staff enjoy trying this stuff, and could learn if I'd show them. And WANT to learn, too. I just haven't had TIME lately to write up training things...)

I also got another chance to be 'creative' with a banner for a deadline page. For the concert pages, we MUST HAVE the banners (feature images) that we've been trying to add to ALL pages. There's no choice, as these are pulled all over the place for concert events. It's difficult to explain, really, but that featured image will automatically display on other pages for a given concert event.

I had a CRAZY BIG poster to use to make a banner 645 pixels wide (and ideally no more than 300 pixels in height). I had to get damn creative to make this. And do some serious cutting around part of the image to include a clean logo for the radio station. But it turned out okay.

Then I had to research like mad with various people to get the information I needed to even create the Event. In doing so, you MUST KNOW the start and end time, for example. Sounds basic, right? Tell me about it as I call and email and so on to get what I need, while on a major deadline.

Then I get another page that Katie wants me to do. I didn't realize this was tied to the eNewsletter, because I had no clue whatsoever about the content for this week (!!!). I'm wondering if Katie would prefer not to work on website pages -- which would be fine, but I do need to know that. So after talking it over with Christine, I just phone her and ask her. That's when I find out it's not that -- it's the fact that there's NO TIME for her to learn how, when the whole eNewsletter is waiting on linking the page that needs the work. Oh!!! Duh, Charlie. Duh, indeed.

The deadline items got done before 3:00 (barely). And the actual eNewsletter went out shortly thereafter. We changed the subject line naming to a more 'catchy' title -- meaning the name of our festival, the word 'Newsletter' and the DATE are no longer included there. That might sound like a little thing, but some people were finding their eNewsletter was suddenly in the Junk mail. I imagine it could now be caught by SPAM blockers, as well. But sure, go right ahead and do that. Don't ask me WHY we've always used the name we have in the years I've been involved (which I changed when I took it over in 2007). Let's see how many subscriptions will never get to the people they're supposed to reach. I'm too annoyed and tired to go into it further.

Ultimately, I was pleased with my own work and felt it turned out successfully. And I enjoyed doing it, even if I was really under the gun to get it done suddenly. Hell, Marilyn is under the gun like that every single day! I really don't mean to suggest I'm being treated differently than anyone else on our staff. We all have constant deadlines to deal with.

I did talk to Donn today about Monday. He'll be swapping out Marijke's computer for Ariel's -- as Marijke will be sitting in that space so she can more easily assist the sales team. I also want Donn to try and resolve Sheila's issues about the laptops that will go on site for CityFair to be used by finance. (I'd thought that was taken care of previously, but Sheila came to me about it again this week.) Donn has been a delight to work with recently -- even moreso than usual. I don't know what I would do without him.

I spent a bunch of time in the late afternoon and evening working in my bedroom again. First I went back through ALL THE BAGS AND BOXES of stuff to see if I had t-shirts or other clothes that sister Sue and Candy might want (after Sue asked me for these). And Colin (our cat) had been in the box for June and Jim (sigh), so I had to re-fold some of those clothes! Hahaha. I have a couple of bags now for Sue, which Sue suggested Marilyn and I could deliver to her house. I guess we'll do that when we're getting our pedicures and manicures that we must get this weekend.

We have a huge list of errands we need to get done this weekend, which includes taking Henry to the vet on Saturday. (sigh) Last year we WORKED the entire weekend, but we've simply got to get some of this other stuff out of the way while we can...

I was in my small closet, sitting on the floor, dealing with stuff. (My right hand just cramped up so bad I could hardly keep typing! Don't go there, hand. I don't have time for this crap!!!) And I needed to stand up and move some things. I could barely get up off the floor. I thought I'd start crying I was in so much pain -- and was so frustrated. But I finally got up and went back to cleaning again.

I showed Marilyn what I'd gotten done and she told me it depressed her. She said there's no physical way I can ever put all my clothes away.

Yeah, I have too many clothes. No doubt about it. I need to get rid of more stuff! And, no, I can't just empty the closet in the office and use that for clothes. What in hell would I do with the TONS OF STUFF I keep in there right now???

Again, there's no doubt that the NEXT room I need to tackle is the office. But I don't see that happening until AFTER the festival is over for this year. It's difficult enough to work on my bedroom right now! But I'm doing it to make life easier for me. I must be able to find my clothes and so on without driving myself crazy. I'm already really happy with the changes I've made so far. I just want to stick with it.

I need less stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Getting rid of all these things is HARD.

Well, I've spent an hour on this blog. Are you kidding me??? Really, Charlie?

I have to go do the recycling and clean the cat boxes. It's not 'real' garbage week, so if I don't get the garbage out tonight, the world won't end (thank God).

New Thing: Marilyn wants us to sign up to turn in our empty pop cans for money to be donated to the festival as a non-profit charity. This will mean more work, I suspect -- mostly for her. Meanwhile, I'm going to need to figure out WHERE TO PUT THESE CANS until we can take them. (Previously I've been giving them to a neighbor. I'd bag them up and put them out on the porch, then phone him. And he'd pick them up, usually within minutes of my call...) I think it's a great idea. Now I need to make it work. Our garage is full of stuff. Again, I need to get more organized!!!

On that note, I'm off to do what I need to do before bed.

Fitbit Update: I almost forgot!!!!!!! That's mainly because I just didn't focus on this today. (I was too sore, too tired and too busy to worry about steps... Whine, whine.) Marilyn got 7,332 steps (IN SPITE OF HER BUSY DAY, CHARLIE!). And I got 4,040 (which surprises the hell out of me).

Sleep well and have pleasant dreams, friends!!!

So.

It's actually ten minutes to 4:00 a.m. right now. Well into April 22 -- rather than April 21. (sigh) As you can obviously tell, I just never woke up before midnight to blog on Thursday...

WTF???

The good news was that Adeena did come in time to pick me up so she and I could get down to the festival office in plenty of time to participate in the jurying for the International Youth Silent Film Foundation (IYSFF) tonight.

Actually, we got to the office by 4:30, so we walked over to get Starbucks (my treat this time) before going. On the way we stopped at Anne's so I could get a couple of bottles of soda. (JP never has ANYTHING for the participants. I remember last year he had one bottle of wine for all three rooms full of jurors! Hahaha.)

Everybody was saying he'd have soda or he'd have water. I was like, 'oh hell no.' So I suggested WE take along wine, which we did (four bottles -- 3 red and one white). That was pretty popular, actually! (grin)

Anyway, at around 5:30 our large group walked up there (it's several blocks). Good thing so many of us went, by the way, because there weren't a bunch of other volunteers -- festival people were pretty much it!

It's actually a WONDERFUL experience. I'd say around half of us had been jurors before. Marilyn has NEVER missed going in all these years. Anyway, they break us up into three different rooms and we sit in the dark with our score sheets. Knowing this, I brought along a bunch of flashlights for people to use. I should have brought PENCILS (I'll do that next week for sure!). Fortunately I had my fave mechanical pencil with me.

Then we have a batch of movies made by students that we watch (kids 20 or younger can participate). Some of the movies are pretty bad. Others are okay. And then you get one or two GEMS to see! We had two really good ones in our room.

After we're done they thank us (more than once) for coming, and we walk back to the office and head for home...

It was Adeena's first time. And Christine had brought her son Zander (whom I love -- he's a high school student). Rich brought his wife Merlin. And it was the first time for Katie and Kate. Everybody enjoyed the experience and is looking forward to doing it again NEXT Thursday night.

So Marilyn and I came home and threw baby tacos in the microwave, and I put on cabbage to cook for our dinner. Then we napped almost immediately after that. I was so out of it from my half a cup of wine and a long day that I never woke until just before 4:00! Good grief.

Today I focused a bunch on website stuff. I think we may have FINALLY finished the domain transfer for RoseCup.Com (at long last). (I wonder if they get that they ALSO own RoseCup.Org or not? They haven't done ANYTHING with that! Oh well. I'm not sure I'm going to make a point of it, frankly, after all this long, long mess.)

I called my friend Rob to talk about the visit this year of Ken (from Marching.Com). He turns 50 on GFP day! I guess he's going to be one of the band judges for the parade. Marilyn wanted to know if he was staying with Rob and Jeff (Ken is how I originally met these two years ago) -- or if he needed a hotel room (I guess he might want one for Friday night before the Saturday parade day).

I spent AGES (hours) on the eNewsletter today with Kate. And finally called and reached my friend Oliver to have him check things out. I had thought it was the engine (the service we use) that had the problem. But it turns out that Kate had made an error during the upload. Anyway, we finally got the eNewsletter out just fine. Hahaha. (Hours of my time later. But that's okay.)

Bad News: Sister Sue was staying overnight Wednesday night at her son Larry's house. She was in Levi's room, got up in the dark to go to the bathroom and stumbled in the dark, taking quite a fall!!! Poor thing!

I had phoned to talk to her, and she told me about this and that she was pretty bad off. I'm asking frantically whether or not she's been to the doctor. So finally I call Larry (who is at work) to find out what's what. He says she wounded herself in a couple of places (broke the skin and bled) and he bandaged those. She HIT HER HEAD (!!!) and had a bump and she was very bruised. Sue has ALWAYS bruised easily -- but now she's on blood thinner all the time, so that's even worse. She was in pain when we talked, but I had IMMEDIATELY phoned Marilyn who said we'd go by Larry's assessment (he was there, after all). Larry said he didn't think she needed to see a doctor, so there we are.

I always panic and think a doctor visit sounds like a good idea. Hahaha. But I'm just worried about her. As long as she's okay, I guess it doesn't matter... I just worry.

I did talk to Tammy more than once (Larry's wife -- Sue's daughter-in-law). Tammy was wonderful with Mom years ago during her cancer treatment, so I feel she's bound to be a big help with Sue.

Marilyn asked me to arrange for Sue to get her hair done -- and we'd pay for it. Funny, because Tammy told me they'd been thinking the same thing. But they were going to take her to a beauty college (it's far cheaper that way). I told her the number of our salon (Sue and I go to the same place) and to set it there. So she's going to get the works: Color, cut and perm. I'm sure that will make Sue feel much better (it certainly makes ME feel better after I get my hair done!).

Marilyn also feels it will make her DOCTORS look at her differently! There's something about not being gray and looking OLD that might influence how they perceive her. Very good point, Marilyn!

I wish it wasn't true, but it is! The older a doctor thinks you are -- and thinks you act -- the more they'll treat you differently than someone they think of as 'younger.' If you think there's no age discrimination when you see doctors, then you aren't older! I can't tell you how many times I've noticed a change in attitude when they realized I was 50, for example (back in the day). And after 60??? Okay then!

Sue could use being seen as a younger old person, if that makes sense. Trust me, it does from my perspective!!! Hahaha.

Anyway, I was on the phone for several hours about Sue today.

Turns out that Marilyn and Candy were texting back and forth about Sue, as well! Somehow Sue had an appointment for tomorrow (!!!) that Candy couldn't take her to -- and that Marilyn didn't even know about. Marilyn manages Sue's website connection with her doctors, so she should get email messages about any and all appointments. So somebody screwed this up!!! Marilyn had to contact them and change the appointment, because nobody could go with Sue. Plus Marilyn doesn't EVER want to go in without blood work FIRST. They can't even discuss her condition without those results, so it makes sense (duh, doctor's office).

And I'd had an email from June that her iPad wasn't working. I didn't know what the problem was, so I phoned there early to find out (talking to her hubby Jim). June phoned me back later and we talked it through on the phone. She thought she wasn't connected to the internet (she was). This is something about Gmail where it stops working for some damn reason. God, do I HATE Gmail! It seems to have nothing but problems! I get that tons of people use it without issues -- and that Donn loves it. But I'm the person always dealing with those issues. Seriously. And I have it, but it's never worked all that well for me!!!

At least it's working on both June's computer and her iPhone (where I last had to do things to get it working, I believe). Or maybe it WAS her iPad last time, too! This could be about UPDATES -- but I don't like June to do any updates without my help...

I guess I need to get over there to see the issue myself. Not sure when I'll be able to do that. We're working this weekend both days.

Marilyn has Court Orientation very early Saturday morning. Then we have Clown School. And Sunday is Clown School Graduation (which we never miss).

Sue B. was in town today! Her father hasn't been doing well. So she stopped by to see Marilyn today. I'm sorry I missed her. Sue's a former president of the festival (two year term) and friend. She was very active on the festival board for years, and now lives in Oklahoma. (Jeff and his family recently vacationed at Sue and Dennis' home.)

I'm sure I'm missing lots of what went on today, but I need to head to bed (it's well past 4:00 now!!!).

I finally took my night time meds. So off I go. Not sure if I'm going to the office or not tomorrow. I need to do more website stuff. Katie and I will tackle a VERY HARD PAGE together tomorrow. It's actually easier in some ways to do it from here. I Remote in to her computer and let her do most of the 'driving' on the computer. But I can step in when I need to. And I'm on the phone explaining things as we go. That works very well with Adeena and Christine, so I think that's maybe the best way with Katie, too...

I should try that method with Kate for the next eNewsletter, I think. So I can see how she does her work. There were a few code errors -- and I'd love to know how she got them.

Well, time for bed! More tomorrow. I can hardly keep my eyes open.

By the way, it wasn't such a good idea not to take my contacts out the second I got home from work!!! Yikes.

So, I did try to 'prank' Marilyn as she was leaving for work, telling her in a very serious way to come see that we had a plant with money growing on it. She told me she thought maybe she'd dropped a bill on a plant and I was telling her that. Anyway, pretty lame -- but I didn't want to do anything mean. I think April Fools jokes are fine when they aren't mean-spirited, otherwise I'm not in favor of them, in all honesty.

We did a Press Release and News item today about our Point One Run that we're having this year. The City wouldn't let us do our Half Marathon, so this was our answer in place of it. But we figured a bunch of people would think we were pulling an April 1 prank, which we were not. Still, why not take advantage of the timing? Hahaha. Anything for more attention.

So I was working on tweaking the web page for the Point One Run this morning -- and sending the final version of the press release to Rich (after finding more errors to correct -- we never hyphenate Half-Marathon, for example).

And Adeena and I spent a bunch of time working on Sanctioned Event web pages. Actually, it works out quite well for me to Remote in -- then let her do the work while I watch. We're on the phone while we do it, but it's much better than actually being there and sitting watching over her shoulder. Christine and I have done this, too. I can't believe how effective this is when you want more than one person to work on a WordPress website...

WordPress doesn't allow more than one person to be logged in on any given page, so this way we can both be seeing a given page together while in different locations. And it is actually better in some ways than having two or more people grouped around a computer. (I need to remind myself of that fact when teaching people how to use our website!)

I had originally planned to go in to the office this morning. But naturally I was up in the middle of the night doing the garbage and recycling (as per usual). And Marilyn was up REALLY EARLY for her 7:30 meeting (GFP Creative). So when I woke she was dressed and ready to go!

Later on she phoned and asked if I wanted her to come and get me, but I decided not to go in. I'd been working all morning with both Rich and Adeena and getting a TON done, so I didn't really feel a need to be physically in the festival office. Sometimes it's more effective for me to work in my home office where I get very few interruptions!

And Marilyn was pleased, because it would have potentially taken her away from work for an hour (half an hour each way to come and get me), so that was good, too. She had another busy day (of course).

I was hungry this morning, but didn't eat much for dinner last night, so no surprise. I ate leftovers for breakfast around 10:00 (not sure why I waited that long, as I was at my computer before 7:30). I never did have lunch, which is often true when I work here at home. It's funny that I eat MORE when I'm in the office than here at home (where I have access to lots of food only steps away). That's been true for me for YEARS, by the way. And, yeah, I know: Most people are the exact opposite. They eat more when at home working than in another office.

We're currently having BEAUTIFUL weather here! Lovely, sunny days! In fact, it's been uncomfortably hot in the house the last couple of days! But I feel it's still a bit soon to run the air conditioning. And with Marilyn currently sick, I don't want to get the house too cold just now.

I got in quite a sweat doing the garbage and recycling last night! It would be wonderfully cool outside, but so HOT in the house (mainly upstairs). I was wearing my glasses in place of my contacts, and sweat was pouring down the front of them! Hahaha.

I am NOT complaining! We're delighted to have SUNSHINE and WARMTH at long last!!! And it should be lovely for Marilyn's upcoming birthday week (she turns 61 next Thursday).

Today was all about the festival website for me. I barely moved away from the computer for the entire day. However my day DID end early, because Marilyn came home from work in the afternoon (I want to say around 3:30-ish), and I quit when she got here.

But I did have an item I was waiting to do (changing out the Bio for one of our princesses at the website) that I did this evening. I wanted it done TODAY. I'd hoped to do it earlier, but it is what it is. I didn't have it in the afternoon when I was still working, and I was napping when it got here in the early evening. So whatever. At least it DID get done today, as I planned.

It was weird, though! This is something at the website that only Christine and I currently know how to do (we're the only ones who have worked with the special setup for the princess page). And for some reason it just didn't want to 'read' the new PDF after I uploaded it! I had to spend a lot more time than expected to get it to finally display. Wordpress is a frankly a BITCH. I feel like it doesn't work much of the time! And I absolutely HATE the way the calendar works!!! Oh well.

I still feel we made a BAD mistake when we went from our old calendar to the current one. I tried hard to get us to stay with the old one. But whatever.

I'm pleased to have Adeena helping me with the website graphics. It's been my goal since last year to get the 'look' to be even for every event page. And I think we're greatly improved this year. (woo hoo) I just enjoy having others who share my vision about this! Adeena is a huge help, no doubt about it.

And so are both Christine and Rich, just to be clear. But there's something cool about working with another person who can read code and use it so comfortably!

Over the years I had various other staff people tell me they COULD read code. But it never really turned out to be true. Yes, lots of people know basic HTML -- as well they should, I think. I mean, it's not in a computer language, for starters, so it doesn't require learning a new language to read it. And it seems like anybody who uses the computer a lot and is online a ton would want to know how to bold something or do a proper link and so on. The main code that's easy to learn. I guess when most of these people told me they could read code, that's what they were referring to. And that's okay, but it's not really reading code -- if that makes sense!

When I'm talking about reading code, I'm meaning you can understand at least the basics of CSS, as well as HTML. And that's a bit more complicated. And you can look at a link tied to an image and tell which part is the link and which part is the image. And you can see a class added to an image and so on.

We need people who can 'see' this coding, because damn Wordpress will ADD stuff to a simple inserting of an image into a page! Why the hell isn't there a CLEAN default you can select? Why in the WORLD would I want to insert an image and have it LINK TO A STAND ALONE IMAGE OF ITSELF, for example???

And often if you've got an image just the right width for your layout, Wordpress will add centering code that forces the image to display halfway down the page -- with tons of white space above it! WTF, Wordpress???

So being able to read the code allows someone to FIX THIS SHIT that's messing up a given web page at our site.

I feel very grateful to have Adeena on board to help me, anyway. And eventually I'd like to get Christine to where she can read this stuff, too. (And I wonder if Rich would like to learn? I shouldn't automatically assume he wouldn't be interested...)

I finished reading "The Robe" last night. You know, it's an amazing book. For some reason I'd forgotten just how well written it is. I'm glad that I decided to get it for Kindle. I wanted to read it for Holy Week -- but it's pretty deep stuff, and I couldn't just polish it off quickly. It was certainly worth the concentration, though! Lovely stuff.

What did I start reading today? I can't remember right now! I think it's something set in the 1800's in England, though... (smile)

Marilyn remains pretty miserable. Head cold type symptoms, but she's been nauseous and having other symptoms, too, so I think it's actually more flu-like than just a cold. And now she's been coughing. I wish there was more I could do for her than just make her tea or try to keep her covered up...

She does need at least another day DOWN (tomorrow!). Maybe she'll be over this by Monday. At the very least, I'm hopeful she'll be well by mid-week when we take time off for her birthday!

(And on another subject: WHY am I so tired all the time??????????)

Well, I think that pretty much wraps up today. Sleep well and have pleasant dreams, friends!

Sister Sue's close friend, Patsy, passed away in the very early hours of the day (around 1:00 a.m. last night -- I think). Sue's daughter, Candy, phoned me early this morning to tell me. Actually, not to tell me, per se. But to ask that if I'd seen this news at Facebook I not phone Sue and tell her about it. Candy wanted to go to see Sue in person and tell her the news.

I agreed, of course, that she should be told in person. In fact, I suggested I go along when Candy told her. But I got an 'odd' vibe when I made that suggestion: I didn't think Candy wanted me to be there, for whatever reason.

Anyway, my dear friend (and next door neighbor) June insisted on taking me to my dental appointment at noon today -- which was very, very kind of her! She's getting over that terrible flu, and still has the runny nose and cough. But she's over the fever and not contagious. And it was pouring down rain all day, so I agreed (I had planned to walk there).

June's husband (also our dear friend) is still very sick with the flu -- he took me to the dentist last week when June was so bad off. We agreed that he's clearly bad because he admits to being sick -- and he won't normally do that!

I went over to her house around twenty to 12:00. Jim was up and around (and fully dressed), but obviously miserable. So June and I left and she drove us up in Jim's car to St. Johns.

Mary (my dentist) agreed to work on the tooth most bothering me, which was one near the front (on the upper left) that I'd found was actually broken. Marilyn and I had wondered if it would need a crown or something, but happily no! I was pleased to get it done. She only gave me one shot, so after it was done June and I went to her bank (drive through), then over to Starbuck's where we both had Flat Whites. (smile)

We spent several hours there chatting and drinking our coffee, until I said I needed to get home for the princess announcement.

I got that done just around 3:00 p.m. (for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter). Today it was Jefferson's girl.

I was waiting all day to hear from Candy. But I'd told Marilyn on the phone that I had a strong feeling she didn't want to include me in her visit to see her mom (my sister Sue). Guess what? I was right! I finally texted Candy just before 6:00 p.m. and found out she'd gone to see her mother at noon to tell her. At noon. And I waited all day long NOT CALLING SUE because she'd asked me not to.

So guess what, my friends? That is the LAST TIME I'm going to ever wait to talk to Sue because Candy asks me to. The last time ever.

But like I said, I was NOT surprised.

Here's the thing: Neither Candy nor her brother Larry have bothered to phone us or text us since Sue was sent from the hospital to her current location. Then didn't tell us about the appointment with the doctors that took place while she was still IN the hospital, either. I'm the one who told Marilyn. So when Marilyn showed up for that meeting, apparently both of them were quite surprised she was there. Of course they were! They obviously didn't want us included, so they never bothered telling us the meeting was happening. Even though it's Marilyn who knows all about Sue's medical conditions -- and has been attending appointments with her FOR YEARS since her gastric bypass surgery 12 years ago...

They never bothered to let us know when she was moved. We found out for ourselves. We're not even sure that if Sue died they'd take the time to tell us right away.

I get that the two of them are more able right now to be there for Sue on a daily basis. But I have a strong hunch -- maybe I'm wrong, who knows? -- that they're deliberately excluding us. I can't see why that would be true. But it's a sign to me... It's certainly a sign.

The second Candy sent me the text, I went to the phone and called Sue, so we could talk about Patsy. Marilyn and I, too, have known her since before the kids (Candy, Larry and Patsy's daughter Stacey) were even born.

Sue is taking the news really well. Patsy has been dying for more than two years. Stacey gave Sue a constant bad time that she didn't want to visit Patsy anymore, because Patsy didn't recognize her when she was with her. Sue would spend her entire visits sitting and crying, because it was clear that even though Patsy wasn't gone yet, she was dead -- at least the person Sue had always known was dead.

So I chatted for a bit with my sister and then went back to work. It's a very busy time and there's so much to do.

And of course Marilyn didn't get home for ages and was very tired when she did get here. I didn't even make any dinner at all tonight. She was eating peanut butter out of a jar -- and then so did I.

Finally I went in for a nap, hoping to read a bit. I was out like a light and didn't wake up until well past midnight (this is backdated).

Fitbit update: I hardly got any steps today. It was way too rainy and cold to be outside much, so I only had 2,279 steps. Marilyn got on the treadmill tonight, and she got 6,656 steps. Good for her!!!

She also washed her hair.

We were having a storm alert today. Winds on the coast (where our beach house in Seaside is located) were around 65 miles per hour -- with gusts at 85 miles! And we were due to have high winds HERE in Portland from midnight on -- and into tomorrow. With lots of rain.

June had called to warn me, and I went out to check the tarp out back. The last thing we want during a big storm with rain is to have that tarp come free from the house! We certainly do not want to flood... But everything was snug -- so hopefully we'll be okay.

Patsy's son Alan shot himself years ago. It really hurt her and I'm not sure she ever got over it. Her son Hugh hasn't done well in recent years. He's living on property that Larry (Sue's son) owns and rents to other people (who aren't happy to have him there). I like to think of Patsy reunited at last with Alan and Stella and all the people who went before her. Sue and I agreed that we will see her again someday -- and she'll be the Patsy we knew and loved (and not the woman of recent years).

The princess announcement went really well today.

I talked with Rich in the afternoon about the upcoming press releases (he'd told me we had one about SMART -- and I knew we were supposed to have another about the RoZone performers that Carol had told me). I wanted to split them up between two days, and he agreed with me. But Marilyn told me the SMART announcement HAD to happen Friday -- as they're announcing at an event Thursday night! And she said the RoZone thing is probably NOT happening on Friday anyway.

It's HARD FOR ME when I'm not in the actual festival office to stay on top of these things. And of course because I put up all the News items for the website, it's essential that I actually do know. (sigh) I just have to try and do the best I can.

I also talked to Christine today and told her about the 'how to' website work that I'd gotten done for the website instructions. She was so nice about it! And she was happy to have all of that there for people to use.

Kate reminded me that her password for her land phone in the office wasn't working. I had to Remote in to fix it (you can't do our phones unless you're 'in' the office). It was no big deal once I was able to Remote in (not that easy to do right now!). I had to call Donn about that!

I was trying to figure out WHY the password wouldn't be the default -- then remembered that I hadn't made a 'new' phone entry for Kate. I just used Allison's because it was already set up (and that was the one Kate needed). So obviously Alli's had changed the password, even though she was told not to.

Here's Christine's and my reasoning: Nobody can use the password unless they're in the office. But if she and I need to check somebody's phone messages for some reason, we need to know the password! So why not leave it at the default? Most messages would be about work anyway... So we ask everyone to leave the password at the default for that reason. Oh well. It is an easy fix (once I can get my hands on it, of course!).

And just another sign how some people hate to follow instructions, for whatever reason.

Marilyn mentioned there would be a personnel change tomorrow. I need to be aware of these, because I have to immediately change passwords on the Server when they take place. (And normally I'm there for these, as well.)

I wonder if Marilyn wants me to go to work in the morning??? I should have asked her! I better set an alarm, just in case.

I have piles of work to get done, that's for sure!

I'm tired, so I'd better get off to bed now... Sleep well, my dear friends.

Marilyn had another very, very busy day -- with plenty of stress thrown in. She had a couple of personnel issues she needed to iron out (and, yes, tears were involved). Thankfully my own personnel problems did not involve crying.

Let's start out with the good news for today. We hanging in there with our walking!

Fitbit update: Marilyn got 6,189 steps today. And I got 10,150 steps.

We both took another walk today with our president and friend, Frank -- plus friend Angel, too! It started out raining lightly, but that really got heavy by the time we were headed back to the office! Marilyn had her raincoat with hood -- but it doesn't keep her all that dry! The rest of us had no hoods or hats -- but both Frank and Angel had umbrellas. Angel did try to keep me under his umbrella for much of the way, but that didn't really work all that well. I was pretty soaked by the time I got back to the office. The good thing is that rain just makes my curly hair even more curly! (grin)

Sister Sue phoned first thing this morning to talk to us about tennis player Maria Sharapova. For those who might not have heard, she announced on Monday that she failed a drug test at the Australian Open this past January.

Sharapova, 28, said she had been taking the drug mildronate, also known as meldonium, for 10 years to address a number of health issues, including low magnesium levels. Meldonium is a blood-flow-promoting drug banned because it helps oxygen uptake and endurance.

Sharapova said she had been getting the flu every couple of months, had irregular EKGs and had evidence of diabetes, which runs in her family. She said she did not realize that mildronate and meldonium are the same drug and was not aware when rules changed January 1 to make the drug illegal. She said that when the World Anti-Doping Agency sent an email about changes to the banned list in December, she did not click on the link to see that the substance had been added to the list.

"I know with this that I face consequences," Sharapova said. "I don't want to end my career this way, and I really hope I'm given another chance to play this game."

Marilyn and I were discussing how ridiculous this situation is. First, athletes fail drug tests all the time from innocently taking medications for one purpose or another. Second, Maria has been taking this drug for a decade -- and it only became an illegal drug this year. The situation really seems unfair to me. And the legal consequences seem extreme. We've been fans of Maria forever, so I think it's awful if this situation ends her career.

But I've said before that I think the drug testing for all sports is far too strict. If someone has allergies or gets a cold, they don't have the same options you or I would have to take a simple medication to prevent them from getting a secondary infection! That just doesn't make sense to me...

Interestingly enough, Marilyn had wondered late last night whether or not Sue had heard about this. So we were pleased when she called to discuss it. She sounded really good to me before I passed the phone over to Marilyn. We didn't get to talk long, though, because we were in a hurry to head to work...

I wanted to start training Katie (Marilyn's assistant) to be able to do website edits for various events that 'belong' to Marilyn and Katie (like GFP). As I mentioned yesterday, I had set up Katie, Kate and Jessica so they had access to WordPress and could start interacting with the website. But it's complicated -- and they need some instructions on how to get started.

But we started our day heading to Starbucks -- Marilyn, Jeff, Frank and me. Many of the usual suspects (like Rich) were over at OFEA again today. Jeff kindly bought my Starbucks for me! Yes, I got a Flat White again. I love them!

Soon after getting back to the office it was time for Staff meeting, which was lightly attended (again due to OFEA). I was in and out of the meeting, because our princess announcement for today was early this morning. I had the time at 9:30 -- but Rich told me it actually began at 9:15! So I was sure we'd be done prior to 10:00 (when Staff meeting begins). But this was David Douglas today, and they have an assembly that covers numerous things besides the princess announcement. So I didn't have the photo until well past 10:00...

After that I had Donn at my desk for a brief meeting about what he was working on. Then Katie and I meet and discussed the website.

Then Marilyn asked me to join in the walk I mentioned previously.

After I had dried myself a bit, I found my blue jacket that I keep at the office -- that has a hood -- and I headed out to find something for lunch. So I did get wet again, I'm afraid. But I was hungry, so I didn't care. Anyway, that's why I had more steps than Marilyn did.

My afternoon was really busy. I did find a minute to sit in on one of the Clown interviews that Angel was having in the downstairs conference room. I'd never sat in on one before, so I was really excited to do that!

Adeena came in during that to see Marilyn about her upcoming stint as an intern, so I got to see her briefly, too.

I almost forgot to mention that I set up with Kate to do the Facebook announcement on Friday, as I'll need to be with Marilyn for her doctor appointment at the time the princess announcement will take place. Kate and I went through it all -- and next week we'll split doing these.

A good portion of my afternoon went to working on the How To website, focusing on the website portion. There are two separate pages dedicated to people who use the website. I had been surprised to discover recently that ONE of those pages -- a page I spent ages setting up last year -- was NOT displaying at the site! When I investigated, I found out that the page was there -- but I had failed to set up the navigation for people to be able to find it! How stupid!

That's been fixed now -- and was what I was still working on when they went into the Creative Team meeting in the upstairs conference room at 4:00. Marilyn finally came over (not sure exactly when) to remind me that even though I was deeply involved with coding, we needed to go for the day. Happily I'd been waiting for that, so I didn't take long to pull myself together to take off.

We drove way out to Marilyn's hair salon, where we were attending a Botox Party. Marilyn's hair dresser, Summer, is always very lovely with us. We were happy they were having another one -- especially before festival time -- as somehow we'd managed to miss the last two! It's not really a 'party.' They have some food to nibble on (a few veggies, meats and cheese, some crackers) and some wine (or cold water). But it's about getting Botox (or some related treatment) done by an expert at a discounted price.

WE both have the area between our eyes on our lower forehead done (where you end up with scowl lines). The effect is really nice. It relaxes that 'angry' look that people get, and lightly 'lifts' the eyebrows, as well. It's far more subtle than you see on TV, if you're wondering. Most people have absolutely no idea we've had anything done at all. But neither of us tend to be angry people! Yet our faces can tend to look that way without this treatment...

There were a lot of women there, so we had to wait well over an hour in a rather small, crowded room. (And it was hot in there.) Nobody complains, because we want this done (and it costs more other places).

Yes, it's painful to have the injections. But well worth it!

We were driving home in the dark and it was pouring down rain. Just a miserable night! I forgot to mention that we've been having a cold snap, so the temperature really dropped last night over night! It was only 61' this morning in the house. And I hadn't turned the furnace up very far this morning, so it was still cold when we got home.

Then we had a drama about me losing the credit card we use for getting lunches. We had to drive all the way back down to the office to see if it was there. Happily I had stuck it in the pocket of my blue jacket (!!!), so we did find it okay. (sigh) I'm not going to ever take it again, that's for sure!

We were home by around 8:00 p.m. -- and both totally worn out from our long, busy and intense day. I didn't mention my own personnel things in any detail, but hopefully it's worked out now. I'll need to follow up on it later on this week...

I put on a pot of spaghetti sauce to go with the leftover spaghetti. Marilyn eats the sauce on her wraps (low carb), and I eat it on pasta. And I also made a pot of green beans, which were delicious!!! So that was dinner.

I was so tired I couldn't wait to lie down with my Kindle. But I didn't get to read for long! I was out like a light.

Thankfully I woke up in time to walk around and get my 10,000 steps! I was only a few hundred steps shy, so it would have been awful not to get them.

Can't remember if I mentioned Jeff losing his Fitbit yesterday! But he did find it, thankfully...

Now I've blogged, and I can't wait to head back to bed.

We need to go shopping at Walmart (were out of a ton of the supplements we both take). And we'd like to go and see sister Sue, too. I guess we'll see how tomorrow goes!

We've officially ditched possible plans to head to the beach house this weekend. In fact, we'll need to head into the office to work, instead. It's okay. It's a busy time of year for us.

I just went and looked in the mirror. You can barely see my poke marks where the needle went in. I didn't bleed hardly at all, which is unusual for me (I tend to be a bleeder). It hasn't gone to work, yet. But it lasts for months when it does.

Tomorrow I have my dental appointment at noon. I'm still not sure how I'm getting there, but I'm leaning toward walking to get the steps. Sweet moment: I had a phone call from June telling me that either she or Jim would take me! Remember that they're both sick with that nasty flu right now! I think it's lovely of her to offer, but I can't let either of them do that, considering. I'm worried about them as it is!

Well, bedtime!

Sleep well, friends.

Marilyn left the house VERY EARLY today! (She had a 7:00 meeting at the office: GFP Creative Team.)

I was dead to the world when she left. I got up around 7:30, and went right to work! I had an email from Carol sending me the images for the revolving header banner at the website. So I logged in to the festival website and got right to putting them up (which was quick work, if I do say so myself!).

Next I started preparing for the princess announcement, which was at 9:30 today. We were putting up the information prior to 10:00 a.m.

I answered emails and did other necessary work. And then I started focusing on the coding of the Rose Cup web pages for the 'fake' website, which I wanted Kim and Chris to see right away (they're who we're handing the website over to). I didn't get that done until around 2:30/3:00 in the afternoon.

It's actually been WONDERFUL to have hands-on with coding again. I don't get much opportunity to do that anymore, I must admit. Nobody much codes the way I used to, of course. That's okay. I get it. But it's still a lot of fun to do! (smile)

Adeena met with Marilyn and Angel today and they all went to lunch (at the Turkey Place!). After that she came over here and she and I went to Starbucks (where she very kindly paid!). We had a long, long chat. It was lovely!

Then she dropped me off and headed home. I was trying to find out if Marilyn and I were going to dinner with Arthur and his husband William (it had been in the works for a spell), but Marilyn was still at the office. We were supposed to meet them at 6:00, and she was there past 7:00 tonight!

When she got home we decided to go for Chinese at our local place. Then I phoned Jeff about joining us. Originally he was almost home, so he said no. But he'd left his wallet at the office, so he had to come back across the river (he lives in Vancouver). So he decided to join us! We all ate and had some Bud Lights and a long, lovely visit! I'm glad it worked out so we could be together. We chatted about work, but other stuff, too. Very fun.

After Marilyn and I drove directly over to the Marquis Piedmont, to see sister Sue. This is actually just off Lombard (just off MLK). (It's on Russell, but that's not a street we'd automatically know out here -- the way we know Lombard and MLK.) It's the place where our Dad was at one point -- yet entirely different! This place is wonderful facility. Very clean. Nice people working there. Nicely decorated. Double rooms, with TWO TVs (I'm so happy about that!!!). Her room is actually nicer than her hospital room, I think. (You don't want to hear the horror stories about that place from when Dad was there...)

We only had a short visit, as it was so late (and we were both tired). But Sue seemed quite GOOD. And she likes it there. Interestingly enough, her roommate is from the same park on Hayden Island that Sue is from! And her last name is Sue. It was great to see her settled there and know that she was in as nice a place as I've seen. (Mom and Dad were in several back in the day, and most weren't as lovely as this!)

I was relieved that they had TV! It used to be that these places only had TV in a main room or two -- and none in the individual rooms. I can't say how many times we drug TVs (big and small) into nursing homes (etc.), then had to have cable installed or turned on! It was difficult AND expensive! We often had to get phones put in, too. Of course, that's less of an issue now with everyone having cell phones (which thankfully Sue does have). But they also have phones there!

Larry (ironic, yes?) the head night nurse was LOVELY to talk with -- and very helpful. He said we could call any time we wanted to check on her. I was really impressed. It's really a load off to know she's happy and comfortable there.

Plus this is perfect for us to visit her, as it's VERY close to our house! We plan to go over there tomorrow, too.

I did have a lovely chat via phone with my friend June. Poor thing! That flu is very nasty. But she's keeping a wonderful attitude, even so.

This has been a hugely BUSY and very LONG week -- but a successful one.

It was nice to end the week with a chat with June, a visit with Adeena, dinner with Jeff and seeing sister Sue settled in!

By the way, I got my 4,000 steps for today (not sure HOW). And I'm still pleased about my 10,000 steps yesterday. I looked it up, and the last time I had 10,000 steps was back in August!!!

We need to get BOTH manicures and pedicures this weekend (NOT looking forward to that!).

I'm probably forgetting things I wanted to share. I'm TIRED. I'm looking forward to going to bed. Good night, my friends!